Mics & Connectors: 4-Track Reel to Reel Recorder

Video Transcript

"For Expert Village, I'm Kurt at KGB Studios Seattle. This discussion borders on microphones like we use here. And no talk of microphones would be complete without how you actually connect them to the reel to reel or to any recording device, whether it be computer or analog machine. So, with that, let's talk about connectors and microphones. We have a ribbon microphone. This is an ancient one, man. I don't know if people recognize that, it's the old RCA Victor M1001 ribbon microphone. Great for voice, used back in the 40's and the 50's. Great microphone, still works, I love it. I use it when I need a soft type of sound. Of the three types, that's the ribbon mic. This is a dynamic omni-directional made by Electro Voice, very much used in the broadcast media. And, of course, this is a cardioid-type of microphone and it's pattern is more like a interesting heart shape where it picks up in the middle. It's a little more directional on the front, not so directional on the sides. So we have cardioid. We have omni-directional which pick up all over the place. We have uni-directional which are picking up more or less on the front, real similar to the cardioid mics. No talking of microphones would be complete without discussing the connections or the way you actually connect microphones to the reel to reel recorder. And this is the XLR connector. As you can see very clearly here, it's got the three pins and it's a little wider. That's the female end and this is the male end of the connector. There we go. It's got three pins on it, one, two, three. And they're shaped like this. You seem them often. Now what I did is I built an adapter to connect it to the reel to reel machine because the cheaper, low-end consumer model reel to reel 4-tracks, do not have the expensive XLR balance connections like these. This is, okay, this is that connection there. As can see, I actually wired up a connector here myself. I bought these at a popular electronic store and just put the two together. This is a mono plug here. You can tell by this particular separator right here, this insulator. When you have two of them, you have stereo. And this wires up from here to here. So now, that we can, we can now connect our microphone into the reel to reel deck, which we'll do next. Okay, these are the brass connectors. They're brass-coated which is, this is the center conductor here and this is the outer sleeve. These types of connectors are called male RCA brass connectors. They are high-quality and they're well made. They are shielded to prevent from interference and radiation that would actually get into and disturb the noise. So, they're very low noise. Now, the other cool thing about this connector is that they're actually marked. Red is always right, interestingly. I don't know if you can get the color there but red is right, left is white. So this is a left connector. This is a right connector. It makes it very easy to connect into those RCA connectors right there. So that's the type of connector and that's the demo of the brass."